All Forum Posts by: Tamara R.

Thanks both of you. I appreciate the input.

@Tim Melton In all other regards, they have been great tenants. The house looks great inside and is nicely taken care of and they have never been late on a payment. In fact they are usually a week or more early. They did have a large dog that recently died that they used to let out in the yard, and I think he may have contributed to the demise of the bushes. I get the impresssion that they are just not "outside people"--the neighbor on the other side of them mows their front yard because she can't stand it when they don't.

@Annette Hibbler--good points. I will probably just let it go. When I did get a look at the property recently (my husband does all of the maintenance and had never mentioned a problem) I promptly wrote them a letter outlining our standards for the care of the yard. The last I checked they had taken care of the overgrown weeks, though it certainly doesn't look the way it did before.

Yes, my lease does outline tenants responsibilities for watering and maintaining the landcaping.

I have some three year tenants that just signed another year lease. They were our first tenants that moved into this townhouse after we bought it. The back yard was a disaster before they moved in, but I fixed it pretty nicely for them--got rid of the weeds, fixed the brick patio, and mulched and landscaped at their request. When I installed the new bushes, I told them they would need to water them often (several times a week) until they were well established and they verbally agreed. Fast forward to now (three years later) virtually all (except 2) of the bushes died and they let weeds take over the yard once again. The weeds can be taken care of, but the landscaping is lost. I never took photos of the back yard after I finished (lesson learned), but I do have a receipt for all the bushes. Would I be within my rights to charge them for the landscaping that died (based on my costs in the receipt) if I don't replace it? (I have discovered that its not reallly worth it to do anything in a townhouse back yard but throw down some mulch, since almost none of my tenants will maintain it--hence the reason I don't plan to replace). Still ticked off that they requested the landscaping and then just let it die. The amount is not huge--about $200. WWYD?

Read this Washington Post Article about homeowners who lost their homes because taxes weren't paid: http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2013/09/08/left-with-nothing/?hpid=z2. An extreme example, but food for though.

I live in Vienna, VA, but I don't invest here--too expensive.

I try to get my new tenants to sign a 2 year lease when they first move in, and this has worked out well. I only have one property that turns over every year, and that is because I mainly have military tenants attending school for a year, then leaving. I did have one set of tenants who wanted to sign a five year lease. At first I regretted that one because they had lots of annoying requests/complaints at first, but they eventually fell in line and have been pretty good since then. I find my tenants to be mainly be respectful, law abiding citizens who try to honor their commitments.

You might want to post this in the "landlords" forum--you would probably get a lot more response. This forum is for "renters" and doesn't get a lot of attention.

Been there, done that. I had one section 8 renter, and our house actually looked worse than that when we finally got rid of them. Luckily, our house was a bit "worn" to begin with and not nearly as nice as that one. Still, very disheartening to walk into that. None of the three adults worked, and you had to wonder "what did they do all day?" Certainly didn't do any cleaning. They never paid their "portion" of the rent, so every few months we would start the eviction process and they would go around from charity to charity trying to scrape together the money to pay their portion. If they had put half that effort into working they probably could have had quite a career! The icing on the cake was the $2000 water bill we got stuck with. That was an expensive lesson, but we have not repeated it--nor will we.

Is there already ducwork in place for the central air? Are you replacing ceilings/walls throughout entire house?

My gross estimation would be $50-$70K depending on what you plan to do. You could try posting your job to the the Service Magic web site and get some professional contractors to bid on your job. This has worked well for me.